Posts by Robert Ring

I would not call Vengeance of the Zombies a zombie film any more than I would call Dawn of the Dead a screwball comedy. Just as a couple pies-in-the-face do not define the latter, five or six zombies do not make a zombie film. But I’m going to stop rambling and get right to the dirt because it does not seem right to waste energy on a film of this quality. Even as far as C-grade trash goes, Vengeance of the Zombies is bad and (even worse) boring.(read more...)

Editor’s Note:This review covers the public domain Horror of the Zombiesversion, which is formatted to fit a standard television and features minor cuts for violence.

Although Horror of the Zombies is the third installment in Spanish writer-director Amando de Ossorio’s “blind dead” series, it doesn’t really appear that these zombies are actually blind. Never mind. His work is fairly well known among die-hard horror fanatics, but this movie is simply awful. From the production to the directing to the plot to the script, it is one big hour-and-a-half-long failure. And, yes, it is so bad it’s good. So, sit back, relax, and prepare yourself for the horrific (not horrifying) Horror of the Zombies.(read more...)

Sporting one of my favorite movie titles ever, Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace is a prime example of the Italian horror genre known as giallo. Gialli (the plural form of the word) are basically stylized mystery/horror films containing occasional scenes of intense violence. They are often marked by unnatural yet strangely intriguing lighting techniques. Naturally, gialli tend to become efforts in creating a moving atmosphere. Trying to uncover a secret can only take a film so far, but offering stimulating color use and set design along the way can provide a good boost, depending on what you look for in a film. Blood and Black Lace is light on story but rich in style.(read more...)

In 1968, George Romero revived the zombie genre with Night of the Living Dead. In 1979, Lucio Fulci brought the genre full-circle by taking it back to its Caribbean voodoo roots in Zombi 2 (aka Zombie1). He also revitalized the horror of the living dead by creating a movie even bleaker than any of Romero’s zombie films. Zombi 2 is a maximally distressing vision of a world flipped on its hea(read more...)

Watching the first moments of A Bucket of Blood, viewers might be confused as to whether they should laugh at it or with it. The film starts at a beat club where a pompous hipster named Maxwell is reciting awful poetry that is actually more like dramatic soapbox ranting. “I will talk to you of art. For there is nothing else to talk about. For there is nothing else,” he says. Go ahead and laugh with no guilt, though, because it is soon becomes impossible for the film not to realize its own humor, even though it never accentuates it. A Bucket of Blood does not take many risks, but it is a fun horror flick about bad artists and worse art.(read more...)

Halloween is one of the most subtle and effective horror films ever made. Frightening and intriguing, it leaves a lot of questions to which we have very few answers, especially concerning the invulnerability of Michael Myers (or, more accurately, “The Shape,” as he is called in the credits). Halloween II is an attempt to explore these questions. Through camerawork and dialogue, the film analyzes the Shape as he continues to wreak havoc, picking up where the first film left off. Because this means we must focus more closely on a murderer whose horror comes primarily from our inability to see him clearly (or at all), Halloween II is not quite as scary as the first, but it does illuminate the nature of the Shape and thereby nature of evil. (read more...)

Snakes are scary. Planes are scary. Therefore, snakes + plane = double scary. Right? The premise sounds like simple genius. The movie, however, is just simplistic.

The content of the film does stay true to the title Snakes on a Plane. You get just what you sign up for. The overarching plot is not really important to the experience of the movie, so I won’t get into that. Just know that it’s Samuel L. Jackson trying to save the day on a plane practically bombed with, as he puts it, “snakes on crack.” Yeah, I know: How can you go wrong with that premise? The movie ends up doing what would seem impossible for a snake + plane flick: it takes itself seriously.(read more...)

Häxan: Witchcraft through the Ages, Danish director Benjamin Christensen’s silent documentary on the history of witchcraft, is reputed as the strangest silent film ever made, if not the strangest of all films. His point (at the start, anyway) is to show us that witchcraft never really existed and that the things people thought were witchcraft, primarily in the fifteenth century, were actually everyday incidents blown out of proportion.(read more...)

"I have been hurt by others. And I will hurt them. I will make them suffer like I have suffered." Thus begins The Sadist, horror cinema's best-kept secret. After Charlie's opening lines, a narrator (uncredited producer Arch Hall, Sr., actually) speaks for a moment. He explains the goal of sadists: "to inflict moral insanity on the innocent," and that is exactly what the film itself does. It takes three epitomical Americans -- middle-class teachers on their way to a baseball game -- and utterly destroys them. And there's nothing that can be done about it.(read more...)

If this movie didn’t have Bela Lugosi in it, it would probably have disappeared long ago. Lucky for it, Lugosi plays a central albeit only functional role, so it is sure to be viewed at least once by anyone looking for lesser known Lugosi films, or old horror films in general. That one viewing, though, is probably all it will get from most people who do give it a chance. The Devil Bat is a generic yet charming piece of classic horror, good for casual viewing.(read more...)